The field of Human Resources has seen a significant transformation over the past decade with the advent of technology. The use of HR tech has revolutionized the way organizations manage their workforce, recruit talent, and foster employee engagement. According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global HR software market size is expected to grow from $17.6 billion in 2020 to $30.7 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.8% during the forecast period.

If you are impressed by the first paragraph then let me tell you that the first paragraph is not written by me. It is written by ChatGPT. It is well written. You would not have known the difference if you glanced through it. Now this is the future we are talking about.

ChatGPT is getting a lot of attention. You must be wondering why?

Why is ChatGPT getting attention?

It is just another chatbot. We have been hearing about chatbots for almost two decades. We already saw Alexa. Alexa even talked to us. So, what is so exciting about ChatGPT? There is a fundamental difference. Alexa is a personal assistant. It gets things done which are operational in nature. Alexa plays a song, switches on the light, even tells us a joke (the humor could be debatable) !

However, ChatGPT is not a personal assistant. It is a language model. It understands and generates human-like text. Moreover it can talk with a context to the earlier conversation and contextualize a related content. It is more like a knowledge worker and has attempted to replicate an important aspect of human intelligence. It is truly a breakthrough for the AI world. It gives hope and tells us that all the possibilities which data scientists have been imagining for decades can actually come true.

Another reason for ChatGPT getting more attention is that it comes with APIs. It can be integrated with business applications and can create immense value in the business world. The way computers made accountants efficient, ChatGPT will make knowledge workers and content writers more efficient. 

How does ChatGPT affect the world of HR?

If you are thinking about what it has to do with HR, it might almost have a pandemic-like effect.It will change the behavior and expectations of people. The pandemic changed the way people made their career decisions. Flexibility became as important as compensation. The environment forced HR to introduce practices like Hybrid working. Many people shifted to gig working. HR is still figuring out the ways and means to engage and leverage the potential of this new workforce segment. In a similar way ChatGPT will disrupt the existing HR Technology setup as candidates and employees have already started using it to beat the existing systems.

I asked ChatGPT to tell me about its capabilities and how it will be able to help HR. It gave me a list of things it can do. Then I practically tested each and every item in the list to understand its depth. Here is what I found: 

Interviewing

I asked ChatGPT to interview me for HR. It gave me ten questions. Then started with the very first question. The question was “What inspired me to pursue a career in HR?” I gave a generic answer. It appreciated my answer and persuaded me to give specific details which I found to be quite interesting for initial interview screening.

The same ability can be used for conducting internal interviews for performance coaching and employee engagement.

Summarizing

ChatGPT said that it can screen resumes. I provided a sample resume with dummy details to ChatGPT. It refused to analyze the resume stating that there were personal details in it. After removing the personal details, it summarized the resume for me. This can be quite useful for sharing executive summaries of resumes of selected candidates for the final interviews. You may also use it for summarizing policies, long documents and learning programs.

Articulating

Are you looking for quick content for your fliers, job advertisements, websites and training programs. ChatGPT can provide you with a decent writeup. Moreover, give it some cues and it can write policies and process documents for you. It can write generic job descriptions as well. You give a context to ChatGPT and you can expect fairly decent content from this AI based language tool.

Suggesting

ChatGPT is also good at making suggestions. You may ask for suggestions on things like competencies for a job description. ChatGPT can also suggest interview questions for a particular job. It can suggest the laws you need to comply with to operate in a country. It can also help you with salary ranges for certain jobs.

Answering

It is good at answering questions. When you ask a question to Google. Google is like a librarian of a huge library of books. Google tells you that you can get answers from any of these books and the most relevant books come at the top. In the case of ChatGPT, the librarian has read all the books. You ask the librarian and you get the answer rather than getting a list of books.

This is pretty exciting for HR. However this has raised concerns over job security in HR.

Will you lose your job because of ChatGPT?

There are remote chances that you will lose your job due to ChatGPT.Iwill share an anecdote with you. I asked ChatGPT if you know Harjeet Khanduja. It asked me to be more specific. I asked “Is Harjeet Khanduja an author?” ChatGPT replied, Yes Harjeet Khanduja is an author of a book on Balanced ScoreCard. I was expecting that it would tell me the names of my books “Leaders, Decisions, Biases” or “Nothing about Business”. It did not.

I asked,”Are you sure?” ChatGPT was pretty confident. It told me that the credit for the book had my name. I went to google and checked. It was a book by another author. This assured me that you cannot shut your eyes and trust ChatGPT. It is garbage in, garbage out. ChatGPT also acknowledges this fact on its first page. Hence you would need someone who can verify the information before you use it for business purposes. 

I told ChatGPT that I am impressed by its capabilities but I cannot depend on it. ChatGPT responded, “Thank you for the compliment! As an AI language model, my main purpose is to assist you in generating human-like text based on the input provided to me. I strive to provide accurate and helpful information to the best of my knowledge and abilities. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to ask!” 

Like it said, It is there to assist you to the best of its knowledge and abilities not to replace you. Here is the summary of the article written by the ChatGPT.

Summary

The article discusses the emergence of ChatGPT, a language model AI that can generate human-like text with context and can be integrated into business applications.The article explains how ChatGPT can help in the field of HR by interviewing candidates, summarizing resumes, articulating content, suggesting competencies and salary ranges, and answering questions. The article also highlights that while ChatGPT may bring efficiencies to HR, it is not a replacement for human intelligence and HR professionals should not fear losing their jobs to AI.

Future of HR Technology

If this is the present of HR Technology which is yet to be explored. You can be rest assured that the future will be even more exciting with advancements in other areas of AI.